Looking for insights into the composer's imagination

Hello--I am a writer researching a novel in which one of the characters is a child composer. I would like to understand what it feels like to imagine music at an early age. Did you hear sounds in your head? Did visual images suggest melodies? It would be great to hear from you about your earliest memories of being moved to write music. Thank you!

As a child I heard music in my head though strangely I recall I heard electronic/dance like compositions -- usually before I fell asleep. I also used to love to dance to popsongs, classical orchestral music when I was a little kid -- and I mean dance all over the place.

I learned to whistle when I was really young, and I have always whistled melodies. It wasn't really that I "heard"; I just whistled it. (It wasn't till much later that I was able to imagine the instruments and stuff.)

Thinking back, I always seemed to do it when I was outside.

My first compositions were, almost exclusively, emotionally driven. It was a sort of release for me.

I remember I was with a friend once in my room, and all of a sudden, I stopped talking and tried to listen to some music I could faintly hear in the background, and he was like "what's wrong?" and I was like "nothing, I think I can hear the neighbours playing music loud" and he was like "oh wait" so he came closer to me and tried to hear, but he couldn't hear anything. Then we went to the window, and the music was getting louder and I was sure that I could hear a full symphonic work played, but my friend insisted that there were no sounds apart from the rustling of the leaves.

I felt so amazingly magic the following week, when I was thinking that maybe I had a secret talent for writing works like that which had never emerged and I got a glimpse of it that day. It only took me a week to find out that my friend had a slight hearing problem and it was indeed the neighbours playing music out loud.